SanDisk looking to sell to WD, Micron, Tsinghua

Flash storage expert SanDisk is claimed to be looking for a buyer, with three suitors reportedly interested: Micron, Western Digital, and Tsinghua Unigroup.

Founded in 1988, the California'based SanDisk Corporation isn't exactly struggling at present: the company's 2014 revenue of $6.628 billion was up on the year prior, although its assets and equity sit lower. Its position, too, as the third-largest producer of flash memory in the world gives it a big chunk of the market, and while it's best known for its memory card and removable storage products the company has also built MP3 players, SSDs, PCIe drives, and even flash-based DIMM modules.

The company has also been on an acquisition binge over the last few years: since 2011, the company has acquired Pliant Technology, FlashSoft Corporation, Schooner Information Technology, SMART Storage Systems, and Fusion-io, all of whom specialise in enterprise-targeted solid-state storage products or software stacks. This may, then, help to explain why Bloomberg is reporting that the company is working with a bank to sell itself to the highest bidder - with three names reportedly in the hat.

According to Bloomberg's anonymous sources, rivals Western Digital and Micron have both expressed serious interest in acquiring SanDisk outright, while Electronics Weekly today added Tsinghua Unigroup, already a shareholder in Western Digital, as a third suitor.

None of the companies involved have commented on the sources' claims, which have seen an 11 per cent rise in SanDisk's shares since publication of the rumour.